Chuck Weger
Chuck Weger is President of Elara Systems, a Fairfax, Virginia consulting firm that specializes in publishing technologies. More than a decade ago, he came up with the concept of "preflight" that changed graphic arts workflows forever. He has written for Macworld, MacUser, Publish!, Byte, and many other publications. He speaks regularly at conferences including Seybold Seminars, Macworld, GraphExpo, HDIA, and others. These days, he specializes in Mac OS X conversion and training.
- Features: Written by Chuck Weger on August 23, 2003
Mac OS X is designed to be a multi-user system; each individual user can have his or her very own settings, preferences, and even fonts. That's one reason there are multiple font locations. Another reason is that the system is very particular about having its own, never-changing set of fonts. Still another reason is that, in some environments, client workstations are booting directly off of a Mac OS X server, and resources such as fonts are located on the server.
- Features: Written by Chuck Weger on August 23, 2003
The Character Palette in Mac OS X is a very cool font viewer and character selector -- sort of like KeyCaps on steroids (see Figure 1).
Unfortunately, for some reason Apple made it very hard to get to initially. After you "install" it, it shows up in the menu bar of every non-Classic application (see Figure 2).
- Features: Written by Chuck Weger on August 20, 2003
A Surreal-world example for the uninitiated, or as Rod Serling might say, "Submitted for your approval":
Jim runs a print shop that specializes in newsletters. A variety of client page layout files (from QuarkXPress, InDesign, even Microsoft Word) come in every day. One day a client file arrives that uses Times and Helvetica. Pretty standard stuff for newsletter neophytes. Jim opens the file in the application (let's say it's InDesign, a native Mac OS X application) and does the standard preflight checks for missing graphics and missing fonts.
- Features: Written by Chuck Weger on August 20, 2003
If you never use the Terminal application in Mac OS X, don't bother reading this. I happen to like Unix, so I'm always using the Terminal. Strange things happen if you have the Terminal's font set to Monaco (the default), but don't have the Mac OS X version of Monaco active. Take a look at Figure 1.
Figure 1
- Features: Written by Chuck Weger on August 20, 2003
Most Mac OS X documentation refers to a hierarchy of folders like this:
/grandparent/parent/child
The first "/" refers to the base of the file system (referred to as the "root" but not to be confused with the "root" user -- oh, never mind). A single / by itself refers to the top level of your startup disk. Fonts live in places like /System/Library/Fonts -- read this as "the Fonts folder inside the Library folder inside the System folder on the startup disk."
- Features: Written by Chuck Weger on August 19, 2003Body:
In my first "Font Fatigue" column, I identified
- Features: Written by Chuck Weger on June 3, 2003Body:
With all the hand wringing over fonts in Mac OS X, you'd think that font problems are new. Let's face it.
